Found Sci (2008) 13:195–198

DOI 10.1007/s10699-008-9141-z

Aristotle’s Logic and the Quest for the Quantification

of the Predicate

Bert Mosselmans

Published online: 19 June 2008

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract This paper examines the quest for the quantification of the predicate, as discussed
by W.S. Jevons, and relates it to the discussion about universals and particulars between Plato
and Aristotle. We conclude that the quest for the quantification of the predicate can only be
achieved by stripping the syllogism from its metaphysical heritage.

Keywords Logic · Quantification of the predicate · Aristotle · Syllogism · Jevons

Plato’s quest for knowledge is laborious and troublesome. The philosopher, liberated from
the chains which kept him fixed in the cave, feels the pain of the light in his eyes, and must
face the remaining prisoners upon his return to darkness. Not only will he be ridiculed and
brought to (a shadow of) justice, he may also get killed in his efforts to bring true knowledge
to other people. The story of the cave presents us with a hierarchy of knowledge: “At first,
he would see shadows most easily, then images of men and other things in the water, then
the things themselves. (. . .) Finally, I suppose, he would be able to see the sun, not images
of it in water or some alien place, but the sun itself, in its own place” (Plato, Republic VII,
516a–b, p. 1134). The Sun is a metaphor for the Ultimate Idea, which is the highest notion
of the world of ideas (or forms), where true knowledge resides. True knowledge cannot be
gained from sensible things as such, since these are constantly changing. Visible things, or
particulars, are to be explained by eternal forms, or universals.
Aristotle argues that this theory of knowledge is very close to what the Pythagoreans
taught. But the latter argue that things exist by imitation of numbers, whereas Plato uses
the notion of ‘participation’. Particular things of this world participate in universals in the
other world. Aristotle complains that it remains unclear what this participation really means,
and argues that exactly the notion of ‘participation’ causes trouble for the world of ideas
(Aristotle, Metaphysics I, sections 6 and 9, pp. 1561–1562 and 1565–1569). Two sensible
things which are large, must participate in the form of largeness. But then it follows that

B. Mosselmans (B)
Department of Economics and Philosophy, Roosevelt Academy, P.O. Box 94,
4330 AB Middelburg, The Netherlands
e-mail: B.Mosselmans@roac.nl

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there must exist another form of largeness, in which the two sensible things and the before
mentioned largeness must participate. But then there must exist another form of largeness. . .
(Plato, Parmenides, 132a–b). This regression ‘ad infinitum’ destroys the rationality of the
world of forms, since the finite human mind can never fully grasp infinity. (This is why
infinity is irrational for Greek thinkers).
Apparently, a separate world of ideas cannot exist, but we do need the distinction be-
tween particulars and universals, not only in daily speech but especially in science and logic.
Aristotle defines a substance as “that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g.
the individual man or the individual horse” (Aristotle, Categories, 2a14–15, p. 4). These are
different from what he calls ‘secondary substances’, or the genera of these species. Obviously,
Aristotle has just defined particulars and universals.1 Universals are either said of particulars,
or they are ‘in’ these particulars. As for the first category, when something is said of a subject,
then both the name and the definition of that something apply to the subject. For instance,
when we call a particular individual ‘man’, then not only the name ‘man’ will apply to the
individual, but also will the definition of ‘man’. This is not the case for the second category.
When we say that a body is white, we do not imply that the definition of ‘white’ applies to
the body. Since universals are always either said of or ‘in’ particulars, it follows that we can
never see universals ‘in isolation’. “So if the primary substances did not exist it would be
impossible for any of the other things to exist” (Aristotle, Categories, 2b5–6, p. 5).
Aristotle does not speak about the ‘application’ of a definition, but about ‘predication’. A
universal is predicated of a certain particular, which is the subject of the sentence or prop-
osition. When I say that Socrates is a man, then I say that ‘man’ is predicated of Socrates.
Universals which are said of particulars (the first category of universals, such as ‘man’), can
also become a subject: ‘All men are mortal’. We have quantified the subject, by adding ‘all’
to ‘men’. Other possible quantifications are ‘some’ or ‘no’, as for instance in ‘Some men are
white’ and ‘No men are pink’. Since ‘mortal’ is predicated of ‘man’, and ‘man’ is predicated
of Socrates, we can conclude that ‘mortal’ is predicated of Socrates. This is an example of an
Aristotelian syllogism, a mode of reasoning which connects a major (All men are mortal) to
a minor (Socrates is a man) in order to draw a conclusion (Socrates is mortal). We can apply
features to specific individuals or to collections of individuals (genera, or the first category of
universals), since we are talking about a really existing (group of) individual(s), about which
a certain feature is said.
The second category of universals, those that are ‘in’ particulars, can never become the
subject of a proposition. Given that this universal is a feature that is ‘in’ a certain particular,
it does not make any sense to quantify this universal. We can say that all, some or no men
are white because the colour white is ‘in’ all, some or no men, but we cannot talk about
all, some or none of the ‘whiteness’, since this ‘whiteness’ is one and the same always and
everywhere, not existing separately and therefore indivisible (we cannot divide what does
not exist separately).2 ‘White’ can only be a predicate, not a subject, and predicates cannot be
quantified. What we find here are the implications of Aristotle’s metaphysics for his logical
system. Since ‘universals’ do not exist in a separate world of ideas, they must belong to our
world. Universals which are said of particulars are actually collections of individuals and
can therefore be quantified. Universals which are ‘in’ particulars cannot be taken separately,
1 See Robinson (2004) for an elaborate discussion of the notion of substance, and for the different conceptions
in Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics.
2 Plato’s Parmenides mentions a problem for the separate existence of forms that is related to this observation.
If ‘whiteness’ is really a separately existing form, then it cannot be ‘in’ particulars, since that would mean
being one and many at the same time. It follows that ‘whiteness’ is seen ‘in’ particular objects, but not as a
separate object itself.

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they cannot become subjects of propositions and are condemned to remain unquantifiable
predicates forever.
If we would use predicates as subjects, then we would re-introduce a Platonic world of
ideas, in which a universal such as ‘whiteness’ had a separate existence. And we would run
again into the problem of infinite regress like in Plato’s Parmenides. If we were able to take
‘whiteness’ separately, then it would make sense to say that ‘whiteness is white’ (we would
be able to predicate ‘white’ of ‘whiteness’). But then we should be able to introduce a ‘higher
level white’, which can be predicated of the whiteness, and of the whiteness of the whiteness.
And so on. In order to deny the existence of Plato’s world of ideas, and to prevent running
into unreasonable infinities, Aristotle had to fix predicates as predicates and prevent them
from being turned into a subject and hence become quantified. Non-existing entities have no
place in Aristotle’s syllogism.
Francis Bacon does not like Aristotle’s syllogism, “because it operates in confusion and
lets nature slip out of our hands” (Bacon 2000, p. 16). He admits that a certain “mathematical
certainty” can be reached through the syllogism, but propositions consist of words which
in turn refer to notions of the mind. These notions are “vague” and “badly or carelessly
abstracted from things”. So the principles behind the syllogism are not rejected, but the syl-
logism is irrelevant because not enough attention is paid to careful induction. It follows that
the Aristotelian syllogism is disconnected from scientific practice, and hence of no help for
the development of science.3
William Stanley Jevons begins his discussion of Aristotle’s logic by quoting Bacon: “Let
great authors have their due, as Time, the author of authors, be not deprived of his idea,
which is farther and farther to discover truth” (Jevons 1890, p. 81). Aristotle was indeed
one of the greatest minds of his time, but that does not exclude further improvements of the
field (Aristotle was too often seen as an authority, as ‘The Philosopher’). Aristotle lived “in
the childhood of the human race”. Jevons is eager to identify George Bentham, rather than
William Hamilton, as the inventor of the quantification of the predicate, the discovery of
which is “undoubtedly the most fruitful one made in abstract logical science since the time of
Aristotle” (Jevons 1872, p. 823).4 Jevons does not seem to take the metaphysical background
of Aristotle’s logic into account, when he states that Aristotle was just misled “by a mere
fallacy of accident”, and that “the fallacy once committed by a master-mind became so rooted
in the minds of all succeeding logicians, by the influence of authority, that twenty centuries
have thereby been rendered a blank in the history of logic” (Jevons 1890, p. 88). Elsewhere
we argue that Jevons’s use of the notion of ‘similarity’, exemplified by the controversial
use of the mathematical sign “=”, was meant to reconstruct logic (see Mosselmans and Van
Moer 2007). Jevons regards reasoning as the process in which something what is known of
a term can also be said of its equal or equivalent. Jevons’s system itself is flawed, mainly
because he fails to produce a clear definition of ‘similarity’ itself (apart from saying that it
is self-evident), but the introduction of ‘=’ allows the quantification of the predicate.
Instead of saying that ‘All metals are elements’ (which would fit into Aristotle’s syllo-
gism), we should state that ‘All metals are some elements’, or even better, ‘All metals = some
elements’ or ‘All metals = all metallic elements’. It is sad however that this equality applies
usefully in only one direction (from left to right): if something is true for all metals, then it
will also be true for all metallic elements. But in order to speak about metallic elements, we

3 See Mosselmans and Mathijs (2000) for more about Bacon’s practical attitude and the role of induction.
4 Interestingly, Kneale and Kneale (1984) do not even mention Bentham, whereas Bochenski (2002, p. 306)
mentions Bentham as the founder of the quantification of the predicate, “usually attributed to Hamilton” (my
translation).

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must already know what ‘metallic’ means (from right to left). “It is hardly too much to say
that Aristotle committed the greatest and most lamentable of all mistakes in the history of
science when he took this kind of proposition as the true type of all propositions” (Jevons
1890, p. 88).
According to Jevons, Aristotle failed to take into account “an infinite (sic!) number of
definitions and other propositions” which do not fit into the scheme of the syllogism. For
instance, when we know ‘Iron = the most useful of the metals’ and ‘Iron = the cheapest of the
metals’, we can conclude ‘the most useful of the metals = the cheapest of the metals’. The
corner-stone in Aristotle’s edifice, the notion of similarity or equality, was missing (Jevons
1890, pp. 89–90). The quantification of the predicate and the introduction of ‘=’ allow a
mechanical performance of logical inference as well as the construction of Jevons’s logical
abacus, which is often seen as the very first computer (Jevons 1890, pp. 139–172; Mays and
Henry 1953).
To conclude: the quest for the quantification of the predicate can only be achieved by
stripping the syllogism from its metaphysical heritage. Subject and predicate become indis-
tinguishable. While Aristotle would have been horrified by Jevons’s infinite number of def-
initions and other propositions, Bacon would have liked the logical abacus as a really New
Organon.

References

Aristotle (1984). The complete works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation in two volumes, edited by
Jonathan Barnes. Princeton/New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Bacon, F. (2000). The New Organon. In L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bochenski, J. (2002). Formale logik. München: Alber.
Jevons, W. S. (1872). Who discovered the quantification of the predicate?. Contemporary Review, 21, 821–824.
Jevons, W. S. (1890). Pure logic and other minor works. London: MacMillan.
Kneale, W., & Kneale, M. (1984). The development of logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mays, W., & Henry, D. P. (1953). Jevons and Logic. Mind, 62, 484–505.
Mosselmans, B., & Mathijs, E. (2000). Human culture and science: Equality and inequality as foundations of
scientific thought. Foundations of Science, 5(3), 339–378.
Mosselmans, B., & Van Moer, A. (2007). William Stanley Jevons and the substitution of similars. In
D. Gabbay, & J. Woods (Eds.), Handbook of the history of Logic Vol. 4. British logic in the 19th cen-
tury. Elsevier, forthcoming.
Plato (1997). Collected works. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Robinson, H. (2004). Substance. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Author Biography

Bert Mosselmans (1969) is a Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Roosevelt Academy (Middelburg)
and Vesalius College (Brussels). His field of research is the history of economic thought, with an emphasis
on the 19th century, in relation to the history of ideas in general. He has held positions in Brussels, Antwerp,
Bristol and Utrecht and published extensively in refereed journals. In 2007 his book William Stanley Jevons
and the Cutting Edge of Economics was published by Routledge. He is currently Dean of Vesalius College.

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